


Trials of a Kind

by Fairleigh



Category: Original Work
Genre: First Time, Getting Together, M/M, Modern Era, Resolved Sexual Tension, Small Towns, Worker/Labor Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-03-02 20:42:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18818641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fairleigh/pseuds/Fairleigh
Summary: Liam just wanted to thank the investigative journalist who helped bring down the man responsible for the death of his father. So why is the journalist being standoffish and cold toward Liam?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Burning_Nightingale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Burning_Nightingale/gifts).



“We the jury hereby find the defendant Richard John Meyers _guilty_ — ”

Liam closed his eyes and released the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He felt like a great weight had been lifted off of his chest. Rick Meyers had been found guilty. The evil man who had killed Liam’s parents would be finishing his days in a federal penitentiary cell.

Meyers hadn’t _literally_ killed Liam’s parents, of course, but from Liam’s point of view, he might as well have been the one who pulled the trigger. And in all honesty, in some ways it would’ve been easier if he _had_. Dad’s years of humiliating decline after he’d become too sick to work anymore; Mom’s fear and frustration over the family’s lack of money, her despair and chronic pain, the value-sized bottle of Tylenol she had used to take her own life; Liam’s own decision, the choice that was no choice at all, really, to quit his job in the city and move back home so that he could take care of Dad full time …

If only Dad had managed to hold on just a little bit longer. Three more weeks was all he would’ve needed. How Dad would’ve loved to have seen the boss get the comeuppance he deserved!

And now the judge was adjourning the court and saying something about the sentencing being held in one week’s time. Liam realized that he’d been so caught up in his own thoughts that he hadn’t been listening to the remainder of the proceedings. Ah well, it didn’t matter. Springfield’s own Trial of the Century was over, and justice had been duly served. The rest of it would just be epilogue.

People were gathering their things and making for the exits. The courthouse had been full, full, _full_ ; Liam had been incredibly lucky to get a seat. There was a cacophony of happy chatter and gridlock in the aisles. It was a Friday afternoon, and everybody, it seemed, was in a hurry to start their weekends or maybe to grab a drink at the bar to celebrate.

Liam settled back into his chair. Hmph, why not wait a while? _He_ wasn’t in any particular hurry, and what with the gridlock, he wasn’t going anywhere fast even if he wanted to be. What would be the point of trying to fight and elbow his way through the crowd?

At least one other person had exactly the same idea. From the back of the courtroom, where Liam was sitting, he could see a small, dark head in the row near the front that had been reserved for the press. The TV reporters were already outside in front of the cameras, so this one had to be a writer. And sure enough, the presumed journalist was hunched over and scribbling notes into a yellow legal pad balanced on his knees. Idly, Liam wonder which newspaper he worked for.

Eventually, the aisles were more or less clear, and Liam decided that now was the time to make his break for freedom. The presumed journalist had obviously decided the same thing at the same moment, and he and Liam kind of bumped into each other as they both pushed towards the door.

“Oops, sorry,” the presumed journalist muttered distractedly. He was short but very handsome, Liam noted, and probably about Liam’s own age. He was exactly Liam’s type, actually, and he wasn’t even looking at Liam. A shame. But maybe …

“No problem,” Liam replied, trying to sound casual. “Hey, you a journalist? Which paper? The Times? Name’s Liam O’Malley, and you know, I’ve been meaning to thank — ”

The presumed journalist looked up at Liam. His eyes took in Liam’s face and narrowed with an impatience that was more than halfway to hostility already. Jesus, what was with this guy?! Liam wasn’t even trying to hit on him properly. Was he that much of a homophobe? “I’d love to chat, but I have a 6 PM filing deadline,” the presumed journalist said, his voice polite but ice cold. “So … if you’ll excuse me … ”

“Um, sure.” Oh well. Win some, lose some. Liam shrugged, took a half-step back, and allowed the no longer presumed- but definitively-a-journalist to pass ahead of him.

The Workers’ Association had booked a room at Giordano’s, a pizza parlor and popular Friday night hangout situated just down the road from the courthouse. Liam, as O’Malley Sr.’s son, had been invited, and since the mood was likely to be celebratory, given the guilty verdict, as opposed to funereal, as would have been the case had the jury gone in the other direction, Liam decided he might as well show his face there.

Besides, there’d be free pizza and beer on offer, and unfortunately, Liam couldn’t exactly afford to pass up free food.

“Welcome! Are you with the Association party?” the hostess asked Liam as he entered Giordano’s. In response to Liam’s nod, she gestured toward the back of the restaurant and handed him a ticket. “This is good for two drinks at the bar. Pies are over there, so help yourself, ok?”

“Great, thanks.” The familiar smell of garlic, tomato sauce, and cheese filled the air, and Liam’s mouth began to water. He made a beeline for the pizza. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was.

The Association VP Jeff Drake was handing out paper plates and napkins. He and Liam exchanged the usual pleasantries as Liam loaded three slices of pepperoni onto his plate. Jeff was the talkative sort, though, and didn’t stop at the usual pleasantries. “Don’t be in a hurry to leave. You should stick around. It’s kind of a last minute thing,” he said, “but we have Felipe Ibarra coming in in a bit to address the membership. You know, Ibarra? From the paper? The one who broke the story about Meyers …?”

“Sure I do.” Liam knew exactly who Jeff was talking about. Ibarra was that Times investigative reporter who’d looked into the string of suspicious cancer cases in Springfield and traced it back to unsafe conditions and toxic chemical exposure in Meyers’s factory — the one Liam’s dad had worked at his entire career. Dad had been one of those “suspicious” cancer cases. In any case, Ibarra was the entire reason Meyers was going to prison. Of course Liam would stick around. He’d been wanting to thank Ibarra personally for _ages_.

So Liam took his three slices of pizza and two bottles of beer from the bar and found a comfortable, out of the way spot to eat and wait. He wasn’t much for socializing, and most of the crowd gave him a wide berth. To be honest, they weren’t much for being his friends, period, not after he’d moved to the city and come out of the closet …

He didn’t actually see Ibarra arrive, but he wasn’t sure whether or not he was surprised to discover, when Jeff yelled for silence and introduced the man to the room, that Felipe Ibarra was the same handsome, definitively-a-journalist who had pushed past Liam on the way out of the door of the courthouse less than an hour earlier.


	2. Chapter 2

The trial had run longer than expected — not to mention that bombshell verdict — and Felipe had barely managed to get his story finished and sent off in time. As it was, he’d had to park himself on a bench outside the courthouse and bang it out frantically on his laptop in under twenty minutes. Then he’d dashed straight over to Giordano’s.

He was still flying high on the adrenaline of the day. Not even that chance run-in with fucking Liam O’Malley could ruin it.

“Why don’t you get up on a chair?” Jeff suggested. “I’m sure everybody’d like to get a good look at the face of their hero!”

Felipe shrugged and did as Jeff suggested. He was short. It was a fact of life. With the extra height the chair afforded him, he could see the Giordano’s crowd clearly. He recognized most of the sea of sixty-odd faces — Springfield old timers and their families, mostly, the ones who’d stayed, the ones who’d never gotten out when it all started going south. And argh, there was Liam, nursing two bottles of beer by himself in the far back corner of the restaurant. Felipe supposed the asshole had as much a right to be here as anyone, but dammit why couldn’t he have just gone straight home after the trial to pour one out for Dear Ol’ Dad in private? Somewhere far, far, _far_ away from Felipe?

Ah well. Felipe had worked long and hard for this outcome. Fucking Liam O’Malley wasn’t going to take away the sweet savor of victory!

“Ahem, yes, thank you, Jeff. And thank you to the Association for inviting me to speak to you tonight. I’m grateful for the support you’ve shown me and my investigative work,” Felipe began in his best public speaker voice. He might be a writer by trade, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t speak persuasively too! He paused, cleared his throat, and continued. “It’s been six years. Six years! The odds were against us from the start; I don’t need to tell _you_ people what a long, hard road it’s been … ”

Felipe proceeded to recount the story he’d already told countless times before, to audiences both national and international, about how some moldy documents filed away in the basement and an offhand comment from his father, a midlevel manager brought into Springfield’s Meyers factory to streamline labor and production for the twenty-first century, had led him down a rabbit hole of grift, corporate malfeasance, and illegality, ultimately culminating in the discovery that unsafe conditions had been slowly but surely poisoning production line workers to death for literal _decades_ — and corporate headquarters had known and done nothing because they decided fixing the problems would cut too much into their annual profits.

“I couldn’t have done it alone,” Felipe said. “Meyers fought the truth with everything he had. But a bully is a bully, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned in life it’s that the way you deal with bullies _is not to back down. Not ever._ And fortunately, I didn’t have to face the onslaught alone. I had help from lawyers, scientists, medical professionals, and labor activists, too many to name individually. We are living proof, my friends, that sometimes the little guy does win. So when you’re knocked down, don’t give up. Get up and fight another day, and if you keep doing it long enough, eventually, it’ll be _you_ , not them, who will be the last one standing.”

They gave Felipe a standing ovation. The kids at school who’d used to call Felipe a wop behind his back; their parents who used to call his father a scab to his face. Amazing how times had changed. With a sigh, Felipe got down off the chair. The high of the day was finally dissipating, and exhaustion was starting to set in. Truth was, he hadn’t done this for any of them. The old timers of Springfield had never really liked him, had never really accepted him or his “kind” in their town, and Felipe was entirely happy disliking them all right back. No, he’d done this because it was the right thing to do, plain and simple. He didn’t need their gratitude, nor did he want it.

“Hey Phil, long time no see!”

Felipe felt his spine stiffen reflexively, out of force of habit. Nobody except the kids he’d grown up with called him that anymore, and he didn’t have a lot of good memories about growing up in Springfield. “Sean,” he replied tightly. “How you been?”

“Oh, same old, same old. The boys are giving me no end of grief. Moira’s about ready to tear her hair out over them. She’s been popping ’em out, have you heard? We’re expecting our fourth in January.”

Felipe nodded politely. He didn’t have much to say in response; he’d dedicated the past decade of his life to work, so it wasn’t like he had his own children to talk about. Besides, even if he did have a boyfriend, he was certain Sean was not the type to want to hear about him.

“Phil, how you doing?” Another former classmate.

“Ah, if you’ll excuse me … ” he said to Sean before turning to the next person who was demanding his attention, “ … oh! Hey Larry, I’m great — and you?”

The conversation about absolutely nothing important continued, but after about ten minutes or so Felipe made his excuses to Sean and Larry and ducked into the men’s restroom.

The men’s was empty. Nobody to accost him here. Ah, peace and quiet at last!

Felipe had just finished unzipping and begun relieving himself when fucking Liam O’Malley walked in.


	3. Chapter 3

He was surprised to see the journalist at the urinal. He didn’t know why. All men had to pee on occasion, after all. But still, he supposed he’d assumed Felipe would be with Jeff and the rest of the Association crew — honored guest and man of the hour and whatnot, right?

After a moment’s hesitation, Liam sidled up to the nearest free urinal and unzipped. Although Felipe seemed to be studiously ignoring him, he could see, out of the corner of his eye, Felipe glancing quickly over at his cock. Felipe’s own cock, which, even flaccid, looked to be as handsome as the rest of him, seemed to judder in his hand.

Well, Liam knew exactly what _that_ meant, and what it meant was that Felipe was as queer as a three-dollar bill … and as queer as Liam himself. “Like what you see?” he joked.

Felipe seemed to freeze, and the air between them got suddenly very chilly, but Liam ignored his better judgment and pressed on anyway. “I’m sorry. Bad joke. It’s just, I’ve been wanting to thank you personally for everything you’ve done for the people of Springfield, bringing Meyers to justice and all that. It means a lot to me, and it means — meant, I mean — a lot to my Dad. Dad, you see, he worked on the line for — ”

“Spare me the sanctimonious BS, Liam; I know exactly who your father was and what he did! As if I could ever forget,” Felipe interrupted, voice a growl of hostility. He closed his fly and turned to glare balefully at Liam.

Liam blinked. What the fuck was wrong with this guy? Was he still in the closet? Was he one of those self-hating gay guys? That had been meant as a sincere expression of gratitude. Liam finished at the urinal and headed over to the sink to wash his hands. Maybe putting a couple of feet of distance between them would help diffuse this weird tension. “Um … ”

“Why can’t you leave well enough alone, huh?” Felipe continued, furious, seeming unaware of Liam’s bafflement.

“Um … ”

“I mean, seriously? What is it with you and me, huh? Meyers is going to prison. This was supposed to be a happy evening for everybody. And instead you have to come in here and reopen old wounds — ”

“Wait, what? What in the _hell_ are you talking about? Do I know you? We’ve never even _met_ before today!”

Felipe’s mouth actually dropped open at that. “I-I — ” he stuttered and blinked rapidly. “You … you honestly don’t remember …?”

“What is it that I’m not remembering? Please enlighten me.” Liam was trying to sound patient and accommodating, but when he blew out an exasperated breath it might have ruined the effect somewhat.

“Well, I … ” Felipe blushed and looked away hurriedly. He was positively adorable when he blushed, Liam noticed. Belatedly, Felipe seemed to realize he’d forgotten to wash his own hands. “Um, never mind,” he muttered, the words half-lost amid the sound of running water.

Felipe dried his hands with a jagged piece of paper towel. He and Liam stared at each other in silence for a moment. Felipe twisted the damp paper towel nervously into a tight cord. Liam waited to see if Felipe would reconsider. When he didn’t, Liam said, “So, uh, can I buy you a drink? I really did mean it when I said I wanted to thank you, and it seems I also have something to make up to you, sooooo … ”

“All right.”

Wow, he’d really thought Felipe was going to say no.

The Giordano’s crowd had thinned slightly by now, so they were able to find two adjacent seats at the bar relatively easily. Felipe, as it turned out, hadn’t even had dinner yet, nor had he used his drink ticket, but in the end it didn’t matter one way or the other because the manager coolly informed Felipe that nobody’d be taking his money for anything he ordered tonight … and as long as Liam was hanging out with him, he’d be freeloading on Giordano’s largesse too. Not a bad deal. Nope, not by any means.

Felipe dug into a thin-crust bar pie with all the toppings like a starving man — hadn’t had a chance to eat properly all day, he said — and the food, more than anything, seemed to break a dam open inside of him, and words began to pour out unabated. He talked about how difficult it was to make a living as a journalist, how he’d moved back in with his parents in Springfield because he couldn’t make ends meet, what he’d found by chance in his father’s old work papers while cleaning out the basement one afternoon. He talked about the six _long_ years he’d spent on the Meyers story, the small victories, the larger humiliations, the people he’d thought were his friends until the story started to threaten their cushy positions. He talked about the trial today, the joy but also the simple _relief_ he’d felt at the verdict.

Liam, for his part, didn’t have as much to say, but he listened supportively and made sympathetic noises in all the right places. He did talk about his father’s illness, though, and how hard that had been, and how a future without any surviving family scared him, how he didn’t quite know what to do next with himself. How he was lonely and didn’t have a boyfriend, which, yes, meant he was gay, which was not an easy thing to be in Springfield.

When Felipe reached out to give the back of Liam’s hand a tentative pat, Liam took the hand into his own and didn’t let go. The touch of warm skin on skin was galvanizing; animal attraction seemed to set them both alight. Their gazes met. Held.

“Um, so … where are you staying tonight?” Liam asked as the barkeep took their empty glasses and plates away. He hadn’t been with a guy in _ages_ ; he felt out of practice. “If you like, we could — ”

“Hey, Phil!” A thick, meaty hand landed on Felipe’s shoulder. Both he and Liam startled at the unexpected interruption. “I gotta jet, but I just wanted to say again how good it was to catch up!”

The unwelcome interruption was Sean Colbin, an old high school classmate of Liam’s. So Sean knew Felipe? But why was he calling him “Phil” …?

Wait a minute. Oh. _Oh shit_. How in the hell could Liam have failed to recognize _Phil_?!


	4. Chapter 4

Felipe made some polite noises in Sean’s direction, but as far as Felipe was concerned Sean was little more than a distraction. Felipe’s attention, rather, was fixed on Liam — had he recognized the anglicized version of Felipe’s name?

But Liam’s expression did not change, and Felipe could not read anything from it. After Sean finally got himself out of the way, none too soon, Liam simply picked up right where he’d left off and invited Felipe home for the night.

It was abundantly clear what would happen if he accepted: They would fuck.

In the end, Felipe wasn’t even sure why he accepted Liam’s offer, but accept it he did. Liam _was_ Felipe’s type — he was willing to admit _that_ to himself, at least. Liam was tall, broad-shouldered, and heavy, a big man all around, and Felipe had always had a bit of thing for big men. It might’ve had something to do with the Original Trauma™ of Felipe’s childhood — which Liam himself had a starring role in — but Felipe chose not to psychoanalyze himself in that particular regard. Besides, that big body also often meant, in absolute terms, that a nice-sized dick came attached to it, and goddammit Felipe was nothing if not a size queen.

The O’Malley house, a modest 1930s bungalow, was located a few blocks off Springfield’s Main Street, and it took less than ten minutes to walk there from the pizza parlor.

“Make yourself at home. Sorry for the mess. Can I get you a glass of water?” Liam asked.

“Um, sure.” Felipe sat down on a nearby sofa. He wasn’t especially thirsty, but he felt like stalling.

While Liam headed into the kitchen to fetch the water, Felipe took in his surroundings. The interior of the house was something less than pristine, and that indefinable smell of old age and terminal illness still lingered in the air. A hospital bed had been pushed awkwardly to one corner of the living room, and Felipe noticed a pile of unopened adult diaper packages. He’d heard about O’Malley Sr.’s slow, ignominious death, had read the obituary. He’d already known about Mrs. O’Malley’s suicide. He hadn’t realized till today, though, that Liam had been acting as sole caregiver.

“Couldn’t’ve been easy,” Felipe said, mostly to himself.

“What?” Liam had returned with a glass of water in each hand. He handed one glass to Felipe, sat down beside him on the sofa, a took a sip from the other.

“It couldn’t have been easy,” Felipe repeated, “having to take care of your father like this, I mean, all by yourself.”

“Yeah.” Liam added nothing further, and the silence between them lengthened. Felipe waited. He kept expecting Liam to make the first move, but Liam did nothing. So they sat, side by side, awkwardly, like virgins on their wedding night, unsure of which bits of anatomy were supposed to go where.

Finally, though, Liam broke the silence. “I remember you. I didn’t before, but I do now,” he confessed. “And, well, I dunno if it matters anymore, or if it’ll make a difference to how you feel about me, but I’m sorry. It was … it was when Mom and Dad started having problems. You know. With money. I took it out on you. I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry; I know it’s not an excuse.”

Felipe felt himself go hot, then cold, as the old anxiety raced through him and released. They’d been in eighth grade; his father had taken an HR job at the Springfield Meyers factory, so Felipe was the new boy … a new boy whose father had been brought in to break the labor union and streamline the workforce. A lot of the guys had been fired outright. O’Malley Sr. had been one of the lucky ones who’d kept his job, albeit on less than two-thirds his previous salary.

It hadn’t made Felipe a popular kid at school, to say the least, but Liam had been the only one to actually take out his family’s grievances on Felipe. With his fists. He’d beaten Felipe up so badly one Friday afternoon after school that Felipe’d had to go to the hospital for, among other things, three cracked ribs, two broken arms, and one punctured lung. After that, his parents had enrolled him in a private school in the next county instead. It was just easier that way for everybody. And he’d never had to be face to face with the hated Liam O’Malley again.

Until today.

Felipe sighed. “I know why you did it,” he said. “What Meyers did back then — it was the beginning of the end. Springfield never recovered. My father was only following orders, but that doesn’t change the fact that a lot of families here were hurt by his actions. I understand why you’d have wanted to blame me.”

Liam shook his head. “Doesn’t change the fact that it was wrong. You weren’t to blame. Neither was your dad, let’s be real. Hell, all that amazing work you’ve done for the Times _proves_ that!”

“True … ”

“Look, do you think we could put it behind us?” Liam reached out to take Felipe’s hand again, holding it in his like they’d been doing at Giordano’s. “I’d like to try to make it up to you.”

Felipe liked the touch of Liam’s big, meaty hand. He didn’t pull away; he didn’t _want_ to. Instead, he leaned in closer.


	5. Chapter 5

They kissed. Felipe’s lips were silky and yielding, and he hummed with pleasure into Liam’s mouth.

Liam was struck with a sense of vertigo. The handsome man whose tongue was teasing his, whose teeth nipped at his lower lip, who fit so wonderfully in Liam’s arms as he leaned in closer, as he straddled Liam’s lap and brought their chests together, was the same little boy who he’d once screamed unmentionable ethnic slurs at, who he’d once punched to the ground and kicked in the stomach until he’d cried, until hadn’t even had the breath to plead for mercy. Who he’d once left alone and unconscious and bleeding in the alley behind the school —

“A-are you sure — ?” Liam gasped as Felipe’s hands slid underneath his shirt and rubbed his nipples and pinched them into hard, pebbly peaks.

“Ohhh, niiice,” Felipe murmured, evidently pleased by Liam’s sensitivity. “Yes, I’m sure.” He bumped his groin into Liam’s for added confirmation. “ _Nice!_ ” he repeated, evidently even more pleased by what else he felt hardening.

Liam’s pants were fast becoming uncomfortably tight. “Bed?” he asked or groaned, rather, as Felipe bit into his Adam’s apple.

“Bed,” Felipe agreed.

Thankfully, Liam’s bedroom, his sole refuge since childhood in an often troubled household, was more neatly kept than the house in general. Lucky thing he’d bothered to make the bed this morning!

The divestiture of clothing was invariably the most awkward part of any close encounter of the intimate kind, but Liam was distracted from the awkwardness by the sight of Felipe, who was incredibly handsome naked too, as it turned out, and the beating Liam had inflicted upon him all those years ago had not, thankfully, left any visible scars …

“Ohhh, niiice!” Felipe, meanwhile, was staring at Liam’s erection, his eyes as bright and saucer-wide as a puppy about to be offered a bone nearly as big as the puppy itself. He looked overawed, and he was practically _drooling_.

The unabashed appreciation just made Liam swell up more. His life had been totally monopolized by Dad’s illness; it’d been a long time since he’d had a partner who’d made him feel appreciated like this for his, uh, assets. He fisted himself a couple of times. Whoa, ready to hang a flag already!

“God, you better have lots of lube,” Felipe remarked as he threw himself onto the bed, face down, ass in the air, implication unmistakable.

“Uh, yeah.” Lucky thing he did. “Condoms too.”

“Good.”

The prelude to their first coupling went a lot slower than Felipe probably would’ve preferred, but Liam was determined not to hurt Felipe again, not even inadvertently. Despite a generous application of lubricant, Felipe was almost virginally tight and took awhile to adjust to Liam’s length and girth. Liam waited patiently, kissing the nape of Felipe’s neck and caressing his back and sides, until finally Felipe gave him the all-clear.

The condom should’ve helped Liam to last longer under normal circumstances, but Felipe was so hot, and writhed beneath him so exquisitely, that he was teetering on the brink of orgasm in under three minutes. Liam gasped as the sweet feeling at the base of his cock began to build beyond the point of no return. “Ugh … shit … I’m gonna …!”

“Yes! Do it!” Felipe moaned his encouragement and rocked back into Liam, inner muscles fluttering. Liam thrust hard and fast, really pounding in and out now, and came, the orgasm unexpected in its eye-watering intensity. Then, while the aftershocks were still rocketing along his nerve endings, he flipped Felipe over onto his back and took him into his mouth, deploying his best deep-throat technique, until Felipe was bucking and cursing and spilling himself all over Liam’s bedsheets.

Afterwards, they cuddled and dozed and made love again in the early hours of the morning, face to face this time. Their grunts, and the wet slaps of flesh on flesh, were the only sounds to be heard, and the smell of their sex filled the air. They came near-simultaneously, and they never stopped kissing.

This was starting to feel like romance.

“Well?” Felipe asked.

“Well what?” Liam was sweaty and sticky and pleasantly sore, and his brain felt as rubbery and slack as his body.

“What now?” Felipe clarified.

Huh, that _was_ the million dollar question, wasn’t it?

“Well, now that Dad is gone, I need to decide what to do with this house, for starters. It’s paid off, and it’s mine, but if I don’t sell it I’m gonna need to find a lodger to help with the expenses. Or I could try to fix it up and sell it — though I probably won’t get much — and move back into the city. I need to stop putting my life on hold, whatever I do. Ah, truth is, nothing seems to have worked out the way I’d hoped for the past few years, but I do still want to settle down and start a family … ”

“ … oh. I see.”

The silence was deadly. Liam wondered if he’d made a mistake, being so candid. He probably shouldn’t have come on so strongly about a long-term relationship after one night of sex. (Scorching hot sex, but still.) “Look, I’m sorry; I didn’t mean — ”

“I was only asking you about breakfast, you know,” Felipe interrupted.

“ … oh.” Liam wondered if it was possible to die of embarrassment.

“ _However_ ,” Felipe added, turning over onto his side and throwing a possessive arm around Liam’s shoulder, “future plans are best made over breakfast, or so I’ve always believed. I like my eggs over easy. That ok with you?”

It was, actually. It was indeed.


End file.
